Clint Scouting for Mystic River

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By Stax

According to The Boston Herald, director Clint Eastwood has dispatched location scouts to Boston to, well, scout locations for his next directing effort, Mystic River. The mystery-drama, based on a novel by Dennis Lehane, is set in a fictitious Boston neighborhood; the book's author and the film's screenwriter, Brian Helgeland, are both Massachusetts natives. So it's a given that Mystic River will be filmed on location in Beantown, right? Not so fast, says the Herald.

Due to an ever-growing scandal in the Boston film industry &#Array; a federal probe has been launched to investigate alleged "strong-arming" of film crews working in Boston by a Teamsters local &#Array; Eastwood and company might shoot Mystic River in Pittsburgh instead. The Boston Herald reports that Clint's location scouts "were in town last week soaking up the local color and scoping out sites with the hope that the set-in-Boston story could be filmed in Lehane's hometown this fall." The paper claims Eastwood "is a stickler for shooting in authentic locales" but that he'll move the production to Pittsburgh if Teamsters Local 25 "doesn't clean up its act."

A Teamsters negotiator told the Herald that he would have been "more than willing" to hash things out with Eastwood's people had he known they were in town. The scandal has scared off many studios from wanting to film in Beantown anytime soon. Indeed, many studio execs have been "asked" to testify before the grand jury investigating the alleged extortion of film crews.

Massachusetts Film Office director Robin Dawson told the paper that her office has "found the right locations, we're trying to come up with competitive hotel rates" to entice Mystic River to stay in Boston. Now, Dawson says, "it's going to be up to the union to negotiate. (Mystic River) is an important piece of business for the Massachusetts film community, which has been hurt in the last year and is depending on a major feature film." Dawson knows the effects of the scandal firsthand; she's reportedly received death threats for her willingness to testify before the grand jury.